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The comic Ms. Marvel (which debuted in 2014) is one of the rare new era superheroes that’s actually gained a significant fan following — her powers, which are all about stretching, shrinking, and growing, had fun visual appeal and her background, a teen Muslim girl who’s also a huge in-universe Marvel ‘stan’ was something that appealed to more broad audiences than just her exact demographic.
In this new MCU version of Kamala Khan, they don’t give her the same powers (although she does ‘stretch’ her energy hand out in a similar way as she does in the comics), for reasons that I suspect have to do with it tending to look pretty silly on the screen (and difficult to handle in CGI in general). But this Kamala is still Muslim and still a Marvel fan, which gives the show a chance to show a pretty fun looking ‘Marvel-con’ that Kevin Feige is now actively working to bring into reality.
Our episode introduces Kamala as super fangirl by showing her fan art of her favorite Avengers, heavily inspired by ‘Scott Lang podcast interviews’ (a great touch). Iman Vellani (a Pakistani-Canadian actress) plays Kamala with a great, well-lived-in perspective that makes her feel as real as anyone. Her parents Yusuf (Mohan Kapur) and Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) are played by Indian actors though, but that’s not really something I feel as clear about commenting on.
The show is definitely trying to be authentic in its own way, led by showrunner Bisha K. Ali (who is in fact Pakistani-British so I’m not claiming to know better than her about any of this). Instead we do get a lot of that classic second generation guilt factor and how her perspective is contrasted against her two friends: white ally Bruno (Matt Lintz) and hijab-wearing Nakia (Yasmeen Fletcher). We see visualizations of Kamala’s imagination in the ‘real world’ in fun ways, which also shows us how often she’s spacing out a bit (leading to a cute little Mulan reference).
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The ‘Marvel heroics’ part is kicked off with an obvious little reference to some mysterious old junk of Kamala’s late grandmother, which ends up being a bracelet/bangle that either gives or unlocks new mysterious powers in Kamala. Although this is only revealed right at the end when Kamala enters a cosplay costume contest and we become desperately embarrassed on her behalf because everyone is laughing at her outfit — until she shows off the ‘real’ powers.
Of course this is the MCU so the idea of people having powers is hardly new anymore, but perhaps it would be unexpected at a fan convention. The convention itself is pretty fun, with a lot of amusing background nonsense, like a ‘You’re Welcome, America’ card with Captain America’s butt on prominent display. But getting there offers more complicated emotions, as Kamala’s parents offered what they considered a reasonable (if kinda embarrassing) compromise — at least despite Kamala lashing out that brown girls from Jersey City don’t get to save the world, we get that immediately refuted.
The classic teen escapage to take a bus out to Camp Lehigh (our classic MCU army base) is fun enough, with Kamala unreasonably thinking she can jump out of a window safely onto a nearby tree branch. Kamala ends up saving annoying teen influencer Zoe with her new powers, which you know is not going to just be simple.
The episode offers a sort of message at the end from Kamala’s parents, to stop fantasizing and focus on you, to figure out your story. But Kamala’s response is simple: ‘Cosmic’, a clear reference to her fave Captain Marvel with her cosmic capabilities and adventures. And to make sure we really don’t get let off easy, we see two agents of the Department of Damage Control, Arian Moayed reprising his role as Agent Cleary from Spider-Man: No Way Home and newcomer to the MCU Alysia Reiner as Agent Deever.
But it was a pretty delightful first episode, with an absolutely supremely charismatic performance from Iman Vellani in the lead as Kamala Khan. It’s hard to say exactly what sort of themes might be explored in the show, but it’s cool to see an actual teenage superhero for once in live action, handled actually decently well. And perhaps it has enough immigrant empathy for others to relate too.
New episodes of Ms. Marvel stream Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
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